Isothermal
Orange earth and golden light
I am in North Carolina, after three days of cooking wonderful food from goat, venison, fresh herbs and spices. What a joy to work amongst friends and new faces, to see them well-fed and to honour the beast we were eating by not wasting a scrap, a bone or the hide. My friend and colleague Theresa Emmerich was teaching the ‘using the whole animal course’, and it was a great success. Tomorrow we hit the road again. This region has incredible orange micaceous soils which I use to create pigments, including the hyper local ‘Isothermal Orange’, a true favourite.
This week is a between-essays week and I have some news and observations to share.
Thank you
Firstly, I want to sincerely thank both my paying and non-paying subscribers to Uncivil Savant. 18 months ago I first set foot in this strange world of publishing writing online and in paper books, not knowing how it would go or who, if anyone, would read my words or enjoy my images. Now almost 4000 people subscribe and 135 of you pay to read me. Thank you so much for this, it means the world to me as someone setting out in writing. I appreciate how times are hard for many people. A year ago I set my subscription fees to much lower than the Substack norm, and though I have put them up by one US dollar this month, it is still a dollar less than the recommended amount. I had been reading a few of my favourite writers on here who have decided to put most of their work behind a paywall. I understand why they are doing this, and I appreciate that it makes good business sense. Besides, writing is a job as well as a vocation, like art, T’ai Chi and music, (all these have sustained me financially for periods of my life). However, I have been mulling it over the last few weeks - I still do not want to paywall my regular posts. I value the conversations that come from them too much.
Talking Heads
So, my approach will continue to be publishing all my fortnightly ‘essay posts’ and intervening informal posts (like this one) for free. Paid subscribers will get access to all the special posts from the archive, including the chi kung course, and there will be another live session of that in the summer when I get home to the UK. There will also be at least monthly video posts for paid subscribers, inspired by my friend Paul Kingsnorth, who, despite hating filming himself, seems to manage to do it very well. After being recorded talking with Dougald Hine two months ago, I now feel less shy about it. So expect something from me stateside soon if you are a paying subscriber.
Founder members joining from today will also get a free copy of my first book Found and Ground mailed to them anywhere in the world. Get in touch with your postal address if you join.
A request
The flip side of leaving all my writing free to read is that it is harder to earn a living as a writer, though I am very happy to say that for the first time in my life, I just about do! Between Found and Ground and my next book in the pipeline (Drawn From Nature - a guide to ancient, natural and foraged drawing methods and materials), and your generous subscriptions here, writing is my main livelihood alongside teaching hands-on classes. If you appreciate my writing and feel you could afford a paid subscription, I would heartily appreciate it. From January to May 2025 I will be taking the first sabbatical of my adult life from teaching or travelling to work, and I will concentrate full-time on my writing. If you feel you can support me by subscribing, even for a month or two , I would be so grateful. As an encouragement, here’s a special offer.
If you can’t afford to pay, I totally understand. And for those who really want to comment but cannot afford a paid subscription, I will still comp you a 6 month paid subscription if you send me your name and email address. I am grateful people want to engage with my work and never take it for granted. Thanks too to the writers on here who have swapped paid subs with me so that we can read each others’ work more fully. I am looking forward to having time to catch up when I get home.
Change
Many things have changed in my life since last month, none of which I can delineate or describe yet. I am traveling with a great joy at seeing this land I love for the sixth time since 1992 and have now visited 33 states of the USA and 3 of Canada. I never tire of the beauty of the forests here, nor the richness of the fauna and bird life. Staying deeply engaged with the land and people here and attending to each day keeps me from pining too much for the spring I am missing back home (wild garlic! pignuts!) and from the people I miss dearly: family, friends and my beloved. But I cannot complain, tomorrow we will head north, reversing spring. The heat and thunder of Georgia gave way last week to the warm sun of North Carolina, and soon cooler Virginia and Pennsylvania will beckon, ending in still-frosty Vermont. All of them are home to people we love to see and trees we love to sit beneath. Next week I’ll compose something longer, possibly an essay, possibly something else. Two things are brewing, so I will see what has more fizz, later this week.
Trees are straight here
These last two days there has been a great big glowing orb in the sky, probably the sun, but I am unsure as it was not seen in England for about 4 months this winter… We are surrounded by many kinds of tree - white oak, juniper, acer and sweet gum, giver of that most eros-full of perfume resins, storax. What I notice even when a tree is the same genus as what we have back home is that trees here grow straight up with thinner taller stems than we have at home. There, outside regimented plantations, trees often wend a spiralling way upwards, like my Uncivil Savant logo or the tree on my first post. This gives rise to the Tolkien-esque and Gothic shapes beloved of illustrators, myself included, and I can’t help but wonder if that is due to British trees having to search and struggle for light. If you are a dendrologist please correct me if I am barking up the wrong tree by assuming that the trees here grow straighter and less branched as they don’t have to go hunting for the light. Anyway, it’s a question based on real observations, as the trees are indeed much straighter, oaks included. If you know the truth, please fill us in via the comments.
Now we are ready for bed on this last day in the south. In the morning we’ll bid farewell to our incredible host David and leave him with a pot of delicious spicy goat, lentil and sweet potato stew I made today. I wish I could give you a bowl of it too.
Until next week, warm greetings from the long, windy, convivial, from-land-to-hand1 road.
A phrase coined by my friend, professor of experimental archaeology, Linda Hurcombe of Exeter University.
I’m planning a month sabbatical next year. It was supposed to be this year, but life has gotten complicated. I can’t imagine taking a 5 month sabbatical.
I enjoy your writing very much and am just starting to stop lurking and start commenting
I’m happy that you got to experience the verdancy of late spring here in North Carolina, as well as our red clay soil. Your observation about the trees is interesting. My home is in a white oak wood, interspersed with tulip poplar, holly, cherry, sourwood, pignut hickory, and other species. Mature trees in the forests are often quite tall and straight, reaching high to spread their crowns in the sun (except for the understory hollies and those very crooked sourwoods). The same white oak trees when growing in open areas as on old farms spread out considerably, often with long, low branches and thick, twisted trunks such as you describe. You don’t see those as many of those anymore, sadly, as they get cut down when the farms are sold for developments. Anyway, I hope you enjoy the rest of your trip through the US. And I would relish a bowl of that stew!